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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Angelique Chrisafis

‘I can quiz for 17 hours a day!’: how Émilien became Europe’s greatest ever gameshow winner

Composite image of Emilien close up smiling in front of a glitzy TV studio style background
‘Being curious is the starting point for everything’ … Émilien at home in Toulouse, France. Composite: Guardian Design; Frédéric Scheiber for The Guardian

Being a TV general-knowledge quiz champion is a funny kind of fame, because random strangers want to test you on all sorts of trivia. “Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street, a car slows, the window goes down and someone screams: ‘Capital of Brunei?’ I answer and they drive off – it’s amusing really,” says Émilien, a 22-year-old history student who this summer became not only the most successful French gameshow contestant of all time, but the biggest gameshow winner in European history and the world record-holder for the most solo consecutive appearances on a TV quizshow.

And everyone, of course, wants to know how he did it.

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